I haven’t been able to shake a grin while writing this. This one is just so pure and adorable that I might die of joy.
That’s gotta be how it gets you. It’s Australian, so the most darling, cutest, happiest little bouncing critter has to be deadly somehow, right? If it was possible, this little fuzzy Aussie would kill you with cuteness.
Today’s Moment of Science… Quokka quokka quokka!
(I hear you groan and I join you).
Just look at those cheeks. That smile. That fuzzy round bottom. It’s like all the goodness and light of Australia was concentrated into this itsy marsupial.
The population is centered at Rottnest Island, just a twelve mile ferry ride from Perth. Literally translated meaning ‘rat’s nest,’ the animals were originally thought by Dutch explorers to be a rodent of unusual size. They’re the tiniest wallaby cousin, about the size of a cat, weighing in at just 6-10lbs.
Speaking of, cats are a natural predator of the quokka, and there are no cats and very few threats to be found at Rottnest. With plenty of vegetation for these herbivores to dine on, it’s quokka paradise, a protected wildlife reserve.
How cute are quokkas exactly? When selfies with the critters started popping up around the internet, fact checking websites received queries asking if these were for real because just fucking look at them. They’re living muppets. To further yank on your heartstrings, quokkas aren’t scared of humans and will just goddamn walk right up to you. The most adorable thing on the planet walks up to you like “choose a filter you hot bish and put this shit on instagram because today we choose joy.”
I feel like this whole ‘island of quokkas’ is something Australians don’t talk about nearly enough just to limit tourists to a manageable level.
As marsupials generally do, they incubate their young in their pouches. A second little quokka face poking out from a pouch may just be weapons grade cute. Their pregnancy lasts about a month, at which point a blind gummy bear of a joey climbs into its mother’s pouch and crashes there for six months. When threatened and being chased by a predator, a mama quokka will toss the helpless joey out of her pouch to get away safely.
I wasn’t ready for that information either.
I’m just saying, they’re cute but if the zombies are coming, they’re tripping your ass.
The population tends to float at around 10,000 quokkas on Rottnest Island, 600-1000 on Bald Island, and around 4,000 on the mainland scattered between a few locations. They were reportedly plentiful before European settlers decided they just really needed to go fox hunting. There’s an expression about foxes in henhouses but no expression about foxes on new continents so there couldn’t possibly have been reason to worry, right?
The introduction of the European red fox in the mid-1800s was devastating to the population of many native species, including bilbies, numbats, and of course the quokkas. Though the species survived, it wasn’t without some human intervention… you know, to save them from the ecological catastrophe that was caused by human intervention.
There’s a $300 fine for touching a quokka. So if you visit Rottnest Island, no petting and definitely no feeding them when you’re getting close enough for a selfie with the happiest critter on Earth.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, begging people never to sneak cats to these islands. To get the daily Moment of Science sent to your inbox and check out details for a fantastic giveaway with Withings and Emu/Bunny gear coming up in just a week, head to patreon.com/scibabe.
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